‘Any reader of Orwell would be perfectly familiar’ with US maneuvers – Chomsky to RT

Major American media organizations diligently parrot what US officials want the public to know about global affairs, historian Noam Chomsky told RT. To US leaders, any news outlet that “does not repeat the US propaganda system is intolerable,” he said.

The culpability of the West – namely the United States – for
world affairs, such as the Ukrainian conflict or tensions with
Iran, is another idea that is not permissible in leading American
media, Chomsky said, adding that world opinion does not matter
when that opinion counters US strategy.

“The West means the United States and everyone else that goes
along,” he said. “What’s called the international
community in the United States is the United States and anyone
who happens to be going along with it. Take, say, for example,
the question of Iran’s right to carry out its current nuclear
policies, whatever they are. The standard line is that the
international community objects to this. Who is the international
community? What the United States determines it to be.”

He added that, “any reader of [George] Orwell would be
perfectly familiar with this. But it continues virtually without
comment.”

Chomsky’s remarks came this week just before a congressional
hearing that was officially titled ‘Confronting Russia’s
Weaponization of Information.’ Of the meeting, House Foreign
Affairs Committee chair Ed Royce said, “The Russian media is
now dividing societies abroad and, in fact, weaponizing
information.”

The social philosopher and MIT professor said, “if there were
any imaginable possibility of honesty,” Rep. Royce could be
talking about the American media. He pointed to a recent New York
Times story that discussed reasons not to trust Iran amid the
tentative agreement between Tehran and
Washington, along with other major global powers, over the
former’s nuclear ambitions.

“The most interesting one is the charge that Iran is
destabilizing the Middle East because it’s supporting militias
which have killed American soldiers in Iraq,” Chomsky told
RT’s Alexey Yaroshevsky.

“That’s kind of as if, in 1943, the Nazi press had criticized
England because it was destabilizing Europe for supporting
partisans who were killing German soldiers. In other words, the
assumption is, when the United States invades, it kills a couple
hundred thousand people, destroys the country, elicits sectarian
conflicts that are now tearing Iraq and the region apart, that’s
stabilization. If someone resists that tact, that’s
destabilization.”

Chomsky also related American media propaganda to recent
moves by US President Barack Obama to reach out to Cuba,
which the US has long considered a state sponsor of terror while
instituting a harsh embargo regime. Chomsky said top American
media outlets go to great lengths to pit Cuba -- and not the US
-- as the isolated party in the Western Hemisphere.

“The facts are very clear. This is a free and open society,
so we have access to internal documents at an extraordinary
level. You can’t claim you don’t know. It’s not like a
totalitarian state where there are no records. We know what
happened. The Kennedy administration launched a very serious
terrorist war against Cuba. It was one of the factors that led to
the missile crisis. It was a war that was planned to lead to an
invasion in October 1962, which Cuba and Russia presumably knew
about. It’s now assumed by scholarship that that’s one of the
reasons for the placement of the missiles. That war went on for
years. No mention of it is permissible [in the US]. The only
thing you can mention is that there were some attempts to
assassinate [Fidel] Castro. And those can be written off as
ridiculous CIA shenanigans. But the terrorist war itself was very
serious.”

Obama has changed course on Cuban policy not for reasons pursuant
to freedom or democracy, as is peddled in the US media, Chomsky
said.

“There is no noble gesture, just Obama’s recognition that the
United States is practically being thrown out of the hemisphere
because of its isolation on this topic,” he added. “But
you can’t discuss that [in the US]. It’s all public information,
nothing secret, all available in public documents, but
undiscussable. Like the idea -- and you can’t contemplate the
idea -- that when the US invades another country and the other
resists, it’s not the resistors who are committing the crime,
it’s the invaders.”

As for international law, Chomsky said it “can work up to the
point where the great powers permit it.” Beyond that, it is
meaningless. Thus, is international law an illusion if the US
picks and chooses -- while exempting itself -- from what is
enforced?

“To say that [international law is] dead implies it was ever
alive. Has it ever been alive?” he said, citing US
stonewalling of the world court’s
demand in the 1980s that the US halt its war on Nicaragua and
provide extensive reparations for damage done.

“International law cannot be enforced against great
powers,” he said. “There’s no enforcement mechanism.
Take a look at the International Criminal Court, who has
investigated and sentenced African leaders who the US doesn’t
like. The major crime of this millennium, certainly, is the US
invasion of Iraq. Could that be brought to the international
court? I mean, it’s beyond inconceivable.”

Chomsky said the so-called American Dream and US democracy are in
“very serious decline,” as social mobility is among the
worst among the richest nations. He added that, formally, the US
retains a democratic veneer, but actual manifestations of
democracy are dwindling.

“Basically, most of the population is disenfranchised,”
he said, referring to public polling. “Their representatives
pay no attention to their opinion. That’s roughly the lowest
three-quarters on the bottom of the income scale. Move up the
scale, you get a little more influence. At the top, essentially
policy is made. That’s plutocracy, not democracy.”